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Khan Academy Delivers 100,000 Lectures Daily
eldavojohn writes "Working from the comfort of his home, Salman Khan has made available more than 1,500 mini-lectures to educate the world. Subjects range from math and physics to finance, biology, and current economics. Kahn Academy amounts to little more than a YouTube channel and one very devoted man. He is trying to provide education in the way he wished he had been taught. With more than 100,000 video views a day, the man is making a difference for many students. In his FAQ he explains how he knows he is being effective. What will probably ensure his popularity (and provide a legacy surpassing that of most highly paid educators) is that everything is licensed under Creative Commons 3.0. He only needs his time, a $200 Camtasia Recorder, an $80 Wacom Bamboo Tablet, and a free copy of SmoothDraw3. While the lecturing may not be quite up to the Feynman level, it's a great augmenter for advanced learners, and a lifeline for those without much access to learning resources."
Khan = Muslim
Or a genetically-engineered Indian.
I had knowledge of this site sooner. My Linear Algebra professor was horrible at giving lectures.(I wasn't the only one who thought so) After reviewing some of the linear material, Khans videos are helpful even after several weeks of summer. In fact the videos on the Gram-Schmidt helped explain what I completely missed the first time.
I congratulate you Khan for your hard work to help educate the people of the world. I know it will serve me well in the upcoming year.
not kahn.
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
http://code.google.com/p/khanacademy/
Would have been nice if they had spelled the name right. My GOD, KDawson didn't even have to do anything like actually verify or read the site to review, he could have just looked at the two links in the damn summary.
Still, I had heard inklings of something like this somewhere before, but never hunted it down. Thanks for providing it. As someone that came to a mind-boggling late interest in actually learning any real math, I may have found a place to spend some serious time.
Thanks so much to Mr. Khan - a noble and important effort to drag those of us in dark ignorance into some level of glimmer.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
In addition to the things listed above, he obviously has a pretty good grasp of instructional design principles.
I watched a couple videos, and has either studied it or learned from trial and error somewhere along the line.
Let us not forget this important glue that holds together solid instruction of any kind.
TFA says:
American Third Position
Finally, a real choice!
Kahn = Jewish
Khan = Muslim
Last I checked, "Muslim" was recognised as neither an ethnicity, nor a nationality. But don't get that in the way of trying to make life simple for yourself or others.
Salman Khan, IIRC, was born in New Awlins, and his parents are from some province in India. Someone else can add to that if they're so inclined.
Either way, he's an amazing guy. The word would be a better place if there more "Muslims" like him around. ;-)
Last I check, neither Jewish or Muslim were either an ethnicity nor a nationality. They are both religions.
Pirate Bay Link
If I recall correctly, Socrates taught by answering questions and encouraging new ones, not just spouting knowledge according to a set curricula, like we do today.
Socrates was unusual then and now in that he tought by asking questions encourage his students to think for themselves and discover answers on their own.
While what Khan is doing is great and praisworthy, it is not the Socratic method.
Check again. Jewish is an ethnicity.
I can't say that enough! As an older person who was returning to university your mathematics and physics exercises and videos were a life saver! I truly appreciate all the hard work and effort you've put into your educational materials (website, videos, lessons etc). They helped me immensely and I don't doubt for a second they will continue to do so when I finally begin my full time studies in September. It's people such as yourself that really help make a positive difference in our world. You're inspirational, thank you and keep up the excellent work. One last time: Thank you, thank you, thank you. Some1too.
From the site:
==============
How can I/you help?
The biggest thing is getting the word out. The students who use the site seem to really get excited by how quickly and deeply they can learn from it. Right now (5/2010), there are about 200,000 students using the site per month; no reason why it shouldn't be 20 million!
If you like to code or work on user interface design, you might be able to help on the Khan Academy applications which we are doing as an open source project
Actually, we are not sure how much Socrates used what we know as the "Socratic Method" since most of our examples are from the writings of Plato (where he uses Socrates as a character in dialogues designed to present a point that Plato wanted to make). Socrates left no writings and for the most part all we know about him is what was said about him in the writings of his students works on philosophy.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
On a slightly different note, I find it a little sad that slashdot contributors are able to correctly spell Nordic/Germanic names with umlauts and complex non-English vowels (immediate example: Piratbyrån), but screw up the spelling of a name as simple as Khan
We don't spell words like Piratbyrån, we copy and paste them. But we don't do that with a simple, short name, because anyone can get Kahn right. Er Kon. Er...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Atheist - a person who denies or disbelieves the existence of a supreme being or beings.
Agnostic - a person who holds that the existence of the ultimate cause, as god, and the essential nature of things are unknown and unknowable, or that human knowledge is limited to experience.
Pride - a high or inordinate opinion of one's own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.
Self-righteousness - confident of one's own righteousness, esp. when smugly moralistic and intolerant of the opinions and behavior of others.
Mr. Khan isn't saying he doesn't believe in God, nor is he saying that God is unknowable...what he is saying, is that it doesn't matter what you think about God, but what does matter is how our existence on this earth impacts the other people living here, and if we have their welfare in our hearts, and we have the humility to see past our differences, then it doesn't matter to what diety (or none at all) we attribute this to, in the end we share the same goal, and that is what really matters.
The true enemy of society isn't religion, but rather the sociopaths who manipulate it to their own ends. They are difficult to recognize until they finally play their hands and the damage is done, but these are the people who have given religion a bad name. They take the religious zealots and turn them into weapons that tear down and destroy all that society has built. We have seen this in all the major religions to date, as well as almost any cultural divide where a schism can be made and exploited by people who want to manipulate the masses to their own ends (i.e., race, sex, creed, etc.).
That is why those of us who carry our faith close to their hearts need to be wary of anyone who tries to speak to that faith. We should always question the motives of anyone who tries to persuade us to their way of thinking. Look to the motives of such individuals, and look to how they treat with those around them. This is where religion fails.
If you're using Safari on a Mac, install ClickToFlash, which in addition to letting you leave Flash off until you absolutely need it, shows YouTube video with an H.264 wrapper.
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
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